Will “Barbie” break Margot Robbie’s box office losing streak?

Conservative News DailyMay 8, 2023

Is Margot Robbie Finally Breaking Her Box Office Curse with “Barbie”?

The new Warner Bros. movie “Barbie” looks poised to be one of the summer’s big box office hits. It’s got everything going for it: A fun and instantly recognizable brand, sex appeal and a creative team of Hollywood darlings.

There’s been renewed interest in the beachy doll in the lead-up to the film’s July 21 release, with Mattel-backed pop-up cafes making news and pink “Barbiecore” fashion becoming a legitimate wardrobe trend.

Robbie’s Box Office Struggles

But, somewhat surprisingly, it’s the final name on the aforementioned list that gives me the most pause. Robbie, 32, is a phenomenal actress without a doubt, but she’s drawn to box office bombs like flies to rotting meat.

Why would an actress with so much skill and appeal, as natural in prestige dramas as she is at the Met Gala, struggle so much to put butts in seats?

The answer is a combination of factors. Several of Robbie’s biggest roles came during the pandemic; the actress has often latched onto flimsy franchises; and some of her projects have been just plain heinous.

For a while, though, Robbie was sitting pretty. “The Big Short,” “The Wolf of Wall Street” and the first “Suicide Squad” all were popular hits.

Then, things went south right after 2018’s “I, Tonya,” the Tonya Harding biopic that grossed a modest $53.9 million off an $11 million budget and earned Robbie a Best Actress Oscar nomination (she lost to Frances McDormand in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”).

Cue the Flop Parade. Her 2018 “Terminal,” a thriller starring Simon Pegg and Mike Myers, grossed an impossibly low $843,970. The true-life film “Bombshell” that she co-starred in with Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron in 2019 got mixed reviews and grossed only $62 million of a $32 million budget before marketing costs. And her 2018 go at playing Queen Elizabeth I, “Mary Queen of Scots,” made no waves either.

She also slumped in her more recent DC Comics as Harley Quinn.

“Birds of Prey,” which was released in February 2019, lost $50 to 100 million according to Variety. The female-led movie with a largely female cast might’ve been a turn-off for superhero-loving audiences (though that didn’t hurt DC’s “Wonder Woman”). Also, the film was just really odd.

“The Suicide Squad” fared even worse, taking in a measly $168.5 million after its Aug. 2021 release. Although brick-and-mortar theaters were having difficulty re-opening then, Disney’s “Free Guy” did double that business the very same month. Same goes for Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” in September.

But it was 2022 that was a real shocker. Robbie starred in two “disasters,” as one Hollywood source told The Post, that were primed to be major Oscars players and — due to star wattage — expected to do respectable business.

The first was “Amsterdam,” director David O. Russell’s unwieldy history piece about a little-known attempted coup against the US government. The October drama starred Christian Bale, Chris Rock, Taylor Swift, Robert De Niro, John David Washington and a slew of other heavy hitters. But it was atrocious, grossed a paltry $32 million — losing an estimated $100 million for 20th Century Studios — and went totally un-nominated during award season.

A few months later came an even-surer thing — “Babylon.” Robbie’s co-star was Brad Pitt, one of the few remaining A-list actors who can still, occasionally, lure audiences to theaters on his fame alone. The director was Damien Chazelle, whose “La La Land” was a critical favorite ln 2016. And it was a lush, but seedy, backlot showbiz story (like Robbie’s one oasis of success, 2019’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”). It crashed and burned, losing an estimated $150 million.

Can “Barbie” Save Robbie’s Box Office Reputation?

Can “Barbie” prevent Robbie from earning that dreaded old industry moniker “box office poison”?

The highly anticipated flick, whose every trailer release becomes a major event and inspires social media memes, should reverse course for Robbie. One producer said the movie was bound to be an enormous success and is effectively “critic proof,” whether it’s ultimately good or bad.

Let’s hope so. Because, for now, she’s a Barbie girl in a flop world.